Since then, there has been significant progress toward cooperating companies working together toward a compatible future.

At a Plugfest, all of the companies set up their equipment in a horseshoe shape around a meeting room. Then according to scheduled time slots, they rotate around the u-shape of meeting tables and plug in their equipment to another’s. A detailed record is taken of what works (but more so what doesn’t). After the Plugfest, the engineers put their discoveries into their queue to be resolved. That’s until the next Plugfest when they do it all over again.

I left the meeting with an appreciation of all of these companies (who are pretty intense competitors at times) working together on behalf of farmers. All of them said at one point, they just want their customer to be able to get the most out of the product they’ve purchased. And they don’t want farmers to have any downtime because of electronic incompatibility.

ISOBUS 11783 is an international movement. In fact, the European market leads the effort. The North American group will join with the European and Brazilian ISOBUS groups to continue their efforts together in the Ag Industry Electronic Federation (AEF). The AEF will provide a global platform for testing, compliance, and development.